Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/56

 must allow it—to be abhorred by many of them, and often it is cast in the teeth of our missionaries when preaching to them. But what would these heathen say could they enter our operas and theaters, and see the shocking exposure of their persons which our public women there present before mixed assemblies? Yet they would be ten times more astonished that ladies of virtue and reputation should be found there, accompanied by their daughters, to witness the sight, and that, too, in the presence of the other sex! But, then, they are only heathens, and don't appreciate the high accomplishments of Christian civilization! Still, Heaven grant that the future Church of India may ever retain at least this item of the prejudices of their forefathers! Dancing forms, then, no part of a daughter's education in India, and it probably never will, that is, unless they become corrupted by “Christian” example.

All of that sort of thing that they ever desire, on occasions of festivals and ceremonies, they hire from the temples and bazaars. Four or five of these women, tricked out in all their finery and jewelry, and tinkling ornaments on arms, necks, and feet, will, for four or five dollars, dance and jest, and sing India's licentious songs for hours; but even they don't dance except with their own sex. They are prostitutes, and yet they are undoubtedly the only intelligent and cultivated class of Hindoo women. So that the profane and debased have a monopoly of education, while the virtuous and retiring ladies of the land are condemned to a life of ignorance. Such is woman in India as to her mind.

Until within a few years this fearful barrier to woman's education stood sternly across the path of the missionary. A change, in the great mercy of Heaven, is dawning at last even upon India; but as recently as ten years ago, when you spoke to a Hindoo father about educating his daughter, the ideas that are here clearly enough intimated at once presented themselves to his mind, and your proposal seemed to him to be almost profane, as he thought “Would you make my daughter a Nauch girl?” The Temple of Knowledge, with its sacred flame, no longer guarded by the Vestal Virgins, seemed resigned absolutely to the control and occupation